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| Home > News & events > 2007 feature stories > Warm new homes for Siberians | |||||
Warm new homes for Siberians |
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It is hard for westerners to understand why anyone would want to live in Siberia. In the western Siberian city of Surgut, the temperature can fall to minus 50, the winter is seven months long, and conditions appear inhospitable to human life. Nonetheless, there is an unmistakable civic pride among Surgut residents. Many volunteered to move there in the 1960s when hundreds of thousands of young families from all over the USSR headed east. They were lured by the romance of the remote territories, high wages in the booming oil sector, and the state’s promise of a glorious Siberian future. When massive deposits of oil were found in Siberia’s Khanti-Mansi region in the 1960s, the small village of Surgut grew in population from around 8,000 in 1965 to 70,000 in 1975 and 300,000 now. Housing had to be thrown together quickly. At one point, the city was building 300,000 square metres of residential housing every year. Most of it was panel housing, with ten-metre pre-fabricated slabs of concrete slapped together to make walls and floors. Housing is crumbling The problem today is that the housing stock, flung up in one great construction boom, has deteriorated to an extent that diminishes quality of life and is even dangerous. Cement is crumbling, balconies are sinking, draughts are terrible. The situation is not unique to Surgut. Two-thirds of the people living in Russia’s 2.8 billion square meters of housing want their housing improved, according to the state housing and construction agency Rosstroy. Alexander Sidorov, Surgut’s Mayor, says: “In the 1960s and 1970s, the city built very intensively. The quality of that construction is not very good. If we don’t do anything now, in seven or eight years we will have very dangerous housing on our hands.” The potential of roof collapse is just one of the worries. In a pioneer programme that the Russian authorities hope will become a blueprint for other municipalities, the EBRD is providing the Surgut municipality with a RUR700 million (€20 million) loan to finance four new municipal housing buildings, and to knock down two old concrete panel buildings. Hard to stay warm The buildings due to be knocked down are in a parlous state. Concrete slabs are sagging and look beaten-up and unsafe. Exterior walls are thin and no barrier to the cold. Heat from the centralised, municipally-managed district heating system that warms big radiators in each flat must be supplemented with residents’ own electric heaters. Olga Panova, a 55-year-old resident who’s lived in the block for 20 years, points to the floor beneath the window. “Feel that!” she says. “It’s like a refrigerator.” The new buildings will be safer, warmer, and 30 per cent more energy efficient. Of the 800 new apartments, most will be sold on the private market, while up to 25 per cent will be provided to low-income families. This tallies well with the Russian government’s commitment to provide social housing. Transforming government Evgeny Ofrikhter, the EBRD banker handling the Surgut loan, says this project is about far more than building 800 housing units. It is about transforming the way the municipal government is structured to handle housing issues. The project’s main component is the city’s review of its housing policy, definition of roles for the public and private sectors in the housing market, and establishment of a special municipal housing authority to manage the project. The authority will eventually take the EBRD loan onto its own balance sheet, and be spun off from the city to be run by residents’ associations. “The sale of most of the flats will provide the money for social housing units and further project development. It’s what makes this project viable and sustainable,” says Mr Ofrikhter. Anatoly Vatz, a local Duma deputy and editor of ‘Surgut-Region’ newspaper, says: “This will help the city to develop a new mechanism for addressing housing issues through transparent tenders, market finance and efficient managerial systems. That would be a great gift to the city, probably worth a lot more than the actual loan.” Alexander Melnik, one of the dynamic, business-minded individuals who stand out in Russia’s regions, exemplifies the changes underway in the municipal government. In 2002, working out of the Mayor’s office, he helped co-ordinate Surgut’s first EBRD-financed project, a €45 million project to upgrade water and district heating. Now he’s running Yugra Consulting, a special company set up to handle innovative projects in municipal services and the housing sector, at arm’s length from the Surgut municipality and the Khanti-Mansi Autonomous Okrug-Yugra authorities. “Yugra is small but we hope it can be extended and broadened and use its experience to advise other Siberian municipalities on the massive reconstruction now getting underway in Russian cities.” Borrowing long-term Mayor Sidorov says he’s happy the EBRD is financing another Surgut project: “From the EBRD we get longer-term money than would normally be available to us. We draw on the Bank’s international experience, in part through consultants funded by donors via the Bank.” But the Surgut project must first get off the ground. Residents are becoming involved in negotiations. In one old house, low-income residents congregate in a kitchen to review questions about the project. Where in the city will the new houses be built? Will the city make good on its word to finally give them new homes? Will they be treated well? Here, as elsewhere in Russia, the issue of improved housing is a catalyst for a new level of civic participation.
By Julian Evans, freelance writer
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